I shrug. There were four of them at Middleham that winter, Margaret and her brother Teddy, my son Edward and her, my mother, their grandmother. How is it possible that death should have taken her grandson and not taken her? ‘I have lost a son,’ I say. ‘How can I care about a mother?’
He turns his head away, so that I cannot see his grimace of pain. ‘I know,’ he says. ‘The ways of God are mysterious to us.’
He rises to his feet and puts his hand out for me. I get up and stand beside him, smoothing the exquisite silk of my gown.
‘That’s a pretty colour,’ he says, noticing it for the first time. ‘Do you have more of that silk?’
‘I think so,’ I say, surprised. ‘They bought a bolt of it from France, I believe. Do you want a jacket made from it?’
‘It would suit our niece Elizabeth,’ he says lightly.
‘What?’
He smiles at my aghast face. ‘It would suit Elizabeth’s colouring, don’t you think?’
‘You want her to wear a matching gown to mine?’
‘Now and then – if you agree that the colour is good on her too.’
The ridiculous concept stirs me from my lethargy. ‘What are you thinking of? The whole court will think that she is your mistress if you dress her in silks as fine as mine. They will say worse. They will call her your whore. And they will call you a lecher.’
He nods, utterly unshocked by the hard words. ‘Just so.’
‘You want this? You want to shame her, and shame yourself, and dishonour me?’
He takes my hand. ‘Anne, my dearest Anne. We are king and queen now, we have to put aside private preferences. We have to remember we are constantly observed, our acts have meanings that people try to read. We have to put on a show.’
‘I don’t understand,’ I say flatly. ‘What are we showing?’
‘Is the girl not supposed to be betrothed?’
‘Yes, to Henry Tudor, you know as well as I do that he publicly declared himself last Christmas.’
‘And so who is the fool, when she is known to the world as my mistress?’
Slowly I understand. ‘Why, he is.’
‘And so all the people who would support this unknown Welshman, Margaret Beaufort’s Welsh-born boy, because he is betrothed to marry the Princess Elizabeth – the beloved daughter of England’s greatest king – think again. They say, if we rally for Tudor we are not putting the Princess of York on the throne. For the Princess of York is at her uncle’s court, admiring him, supporting him, an ornament to his reign as she was an ornament to her father’s reign.’
‘But some people will say she is little better than a whore. She will be shamed.’
He shrugs. ‘They said the same of her mother. We passed a law that said just that of her mother. And anyway, I would not have thought that would trouble you.’
He is right. Nothing troubles me. Certainly not the humiliation of the Rivers girl.
WESTMINSTER PALACE, LONDON, WINTER 1484
The threat from Henry Tudor in Brittany absorbs the whole court. He is only a young man, and any king less jealous than a York one might have disregarded his distant claim to the throne of England through his mother’s line. But it is a York king on the throne and Richard knows that Tudor is planning an invasion, seeking support in Brittany from the duke who has protected him for so long, approaching France, the old inveterate enemy of England, for help.
Margaret Beaufort, his mother, my one-time friend, sulks in her country house, gaoled by her husband at Richard’s instruction, and his bride-to-be Elizabeth of York is now all but the first lady of court, dancing every night in the palace which was her childhood home, her wrists bright with bracelets, her hair sparkling under a gold net. She seems to have gifts that arrive every morning as we sit in the chambers that overlook the grey wintry river. Every morning there is a knock at the door and a pageboy bringing something for the girl whom everyone now calls Princess Elizabeth, as if Richard had not passed a law to declare her a bastard and to give her the name of her mother’s first husband. She giggles when she opens it, and she gives a quick guilty glance at me. Always, the gifts come without a note but we all know who is sending her priceless fairings. I remember last year when Richard gave me a present every day for the twelve days of Christmas. But I remember with indifference. I don’t care for jewels now.
The Christmas feast is the pinnacle of her joy. Last year she was a disgraced object of our charity, named as a bastard and claimed as a bride by a traitor, but this year she has bobbed unstoppably upwards, like a cheap light cork in stormy water. We now go for dress fittings together as if we were mother and daughter, as if we were sisters. We stand in the great room of the wardrobe while they pin silks and cloth of gold and furs on us, and I look at the great silvered mirror and see my tired face and fading hair in the same bright colours as the smiling beauty beside me. She is ten years younger than me and it is never more obvious than when we are standing side by side and dressed alike.
